PrEP means Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, and it’s the use of anti-HIV medication that keeps HIV negative people from becoming infected. PrEP is approved by the FDA and has been shown to be safe and effective. A single pill taken once daily, it is highly effective against HIV when taken every day. The medication interferes with HIV’s ability to copy itself in your body after you’ve been exposed. This prevents it from establishing an infection and making you sick.

Even though PrEP has been around in the U.S. for over a year, not a lot of people know about it. And, even fewer people feel like they know enough about it to be able to make an informed decision about whether or not to use it. For those who do use it, the information they have might be more focused on practical issues, like where to get it, rather than on what PrEP does in the body to prevent HIV infection.

By using animation to show PrEP in the body and why “once a day” is recommended, people can see what PrEP does and people who currently use PrEP can create an image of what happens when they take a PrEP pill every day.

View the video below to get information about PrEP and see an illustration of how it can work inside the body to prevent HIV infection.

Please note that for women considering PrEP, current evidence suggests that maximum protection can be achieved after about 3-weeks of being on PrEP.

This video and What is PrEP? is brought to you by the PrEP REP project, led by K Rivet Amico, University of Connecticut, and Sybil Hosek, Stroger Hospital of Cook County Chicago, in collaboration with Chris Balthazar, Stroger Hospital. Animation by Tom Coggia.

This project was supported by an unrestricted educational grant from Gilead Sciences, Inc. The content and views expressed in this video are those of the presenters and do not necessarily represent the views, opinions or positions of and should not be attributed to the funder for the PrEP REP project or affiliated institutions.

This work is free to be shared, distributed or transmitted. It may not be altered or transformed without permission under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.